Why Friedrich Von Hayek Must be Barred From Canada

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

I realize that Friedrich Von Hayek died in 1992, but he is one of the "scholars" who helped to draft neoconservative theory.

In Lawrence Martin's book Harperland, he states that he spoke with Harper insiders about Leo Strauss, deemed the primary neoconservative theorist, and they denied that Stephen Harper had ever read him. I'm not surprised. A bit too deep, though he does ascribe to his theory of "hidden messages". Calculated ambiguity, taught at neocon schools everywhere. Orwellian with a twist.

However, Harper's boys do suggest that their boss is an avid reader and follower of Friedrich Von Hayek, an Austrian economist, and author of The Road to Serfdom, which has become a Bible to neocon disciples.

I'm currently reading the Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, with introduction by none other than Milton Friedman, a colleague of Hayek's at the Chicago School's Committee on Social Thought.

In the first chapter, The Abandoned Road, Hayek speaks of the roots of western civilisation. The roots which he claims come from the Greeks and Romans. He also laments that we are abandoning the sage advice of Adam Smith, John Milton, Erasmus, Cicero, etc., etc., etc.

However, Canadian civilization was not based on the ramblings of the historic scholars, or the ancient Romans or Greeks. Our unique culture was based on the relationship between early European settlers and our First Nations.

When conducting trade on our river highways, they were not thinking of Adam Smith and the sovereignty of the consumer. Nor were they reading Milton's Paradise Lost or the philosophies of Marcus Tullius Cicero.

They were too busy trying to survive.

Von Hayek would never understand that. He grew up in Vienna, where his father was of minor nobility and his mother a member of the upper-class bourgeoisie. He led a privileged life, influenced by the intelligentsia of Viennese society.

So invoking the scholars was as natural to him as breathing, but understanding the needs of the general population, completely alien.

In his introduction to the Road to the Serfdom, he says that it was originally only meant to be a pamphlet, written for a British audience. He was surprised by it's success and especially the interest shown by the University of Chicago.

He even thought that he may have written it differently for the Americans. However, when he began to lecture in Canada, especially at the Fraser Institute, he should have written it differently for Canadians, because our culture is vastly different from that of the United States.

We don't thump our chests and chant "Canada, Canada, Canada", which doesn't mean that we aren't proud Canadians. We're just not annoyingly so.

And this is something that Stephen Harper doesn't understand. He's always been embarrassed by us. Socialists, lazy, a welfare state, mamby pamby Peacekeepers.

We needed to be more muscular. Tough soldiers behind state of the art heavy machinery. War toys to flaunt and intimidate others with.

He just doesn't get it.

Norm Jewison was interviewed several years ago and asked why he felt that Canadians were so successful in the entertainment industry. From Comedians like Jim Carey and Martin Short to directors like himself and David Cronenberg.

Jewison answered that it was because we only had six crayons, explaining to a confused interviewer, that Canadians have learned to make do. We never had the money that the American entertainment industry did, so we had to push the limits. Make do with what we had and turn those six colours into a kaledescope.

Martin Short once spoke of the successful series SCTV, that became the inspiration for Saturday Night Live. They ran the show on a shoestring, first writing the scripts, and then visiting the local Salvation Army thrift store for costumes.

Stephen Harper likes to tout our military history, without really understanding our military history. At Vimy Ridge, we were successful where so many other better equipped armies were not. And it's because we learned to make do with less.

Instead we focused on training down to the finest detail.

Stephen Harper instead follows the beliefs of people like Donald Rumsfeld, who felt that the man or woman behind the gun was not important. Only the size of the gun.

I watched a documentary about Iraq, and they interviewed several young American soldiers who admitted that they really had no idea what they were doing, or even how to properly handle those big guns. One young man said that before joining up he was working at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Now he was a member of the Intelligence Corp, charged with information gathering, and carrying a huge weapon.

Lester Pearson once said that the Americans may be richer than us, but that we were better off. We always thrived to be a nation that took care of its people.

This of course is anathema to the neoconservative, who believe that people should take care of themselves. This has never been the Canadian way. We do rely on ourselves, but also on our neighbours and our government.

Three and a half centuries ago, France sent shiploads of young brides, to help settle Quebec. Filles du roi, or 'King's Daughters. Men were told to select robust wives, capable of hard work and they were paid so much for every child born. Government intervention to encourage population growth.

My great grandfather was granted 100 acres of land in New Brunswick, for $3.00 and a set number of hours working to build roads. He also had to commit to clearing so many acres of land a year. Government intervention to build infrastructure and aid in prosperity.

A favourite social event for early settlers was the work 'Bees'. Logging bees, stumping bees, quilting bees. Communities working together. Collectivism to accomplish tasks beyond the ability of a single family. (from my Victorian Canada website)

We don't share the individualist attitudes of American history. It's rather telling that we selected Tommy Douglas as the 'Greatest Canadian'. The man who gave us universal healthcare, something Harper told the U.S. conservatives would "horrify" them.

Stephen Harper doesn't get us, he just wants to change us. Remake Canadians in the American image. An American image created by people like Friedrich Von Hayek.

In a 1997 CBC interview, Harper was asked "Is there a Canadian culture?" He replied: "Yes, in a very loose sense. It consists of regional cultures within Canada, regional cultures that cross borders with the US. We're part of a worldwide Anglo-American culture..."

Nope. He just doesn't get us.

Allan Bloom Writes Harper's War on Women Strategy

(Left to right, William Gairdner, Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom)
A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

I first read Susan Faludi's 1991 classic, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, several years ago, and I remember thinking that we were lucky to be living in Canada.

We had our male chauvinists, but government policy reflected, at least the notion of equality for women. We certainly knew of the U.S. 'Moral Majority', which later became the 'Religious Right', but as of yet, we had not been inflicted.

Reading the book again, 20 years later, Faludi could be writing about the Harper government and Canada's Religious Right.

When she discusses the influences of the Chicago School, and their Committee on Social Thought, she could just as easily be talking about our own Calgary School, that has gifted us with Stephen Harper, Pierre Poilievre and other like minded neocons.

And just as Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, succinctly outlines western imperialism, Faludi's Backlash clearly lays out the neoconservative feminine agenda.

She devotes part of a chapter to Allan Bloom, a student of Leo Strauss, and author of the book, The Closing of the American Mind. Harper's counterpart is William Gairdner, a founding member of the Reform Party, whose misogyny is so profound, that in 2007, he became the topic of a paper written by Donna L. Lillian, Assistant Professor of Discourse and Linguistics in the Department of English at East Carolina University: A thorn by any other name: sexist discourse as hate speech, which centered around Gairdner, and analyzed "Canadian neoconservative discourse as racist, sexist, and homophobic."

"In arguing that at least some sexist discourse should be considered hate speech, I first demonstrate that the popular discourse of Canadian neoconservative author William D. Gairdner is sexist.... Sexism, the ideology and practice of relegating women to a lower rung on the social hierarchy than men simply by virtue of their femaleness, is an integral component of neoconservative thinking, and one way that such sexism is produced and reproduced is through language"

Gairdner has actually been compared to Bloom and his The Book of Absolutes: A Critique of Relativism and a Defence of Universals, is hauntingly similar to Bloom's Closing of the American Mind.

But it is Gairdner's The Trouble With Canada, that was sold at Reform Party assemblies, that best defines Harper's anti-feminist policies.

Allan Bloomberg and William Gairdner

The establishment came down with a constitutional package which they put to a national referendum. The package included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things. (Stephen Harper, 1997 speech to Council for National Policy)

Susan Faludi writes of Allan Bloom:

Ostensibly about the decline in American education, Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind dedicates page after page to an assault on the women's movement. Whether he's deploring the state of scholarship, the emasculating tendencies of music, or the transience of student relationships, the baleful influence he identifies is always the same: the feminist transformation of society that has filled women with demands and desires and depleted men of vim and vigor. "The latest enemy of the vitality of the classic texts is feminism," he writes; concerted attacks on the literary canon from '60s student radicals and minorities pale in comparison, he says. Even the sexual revolution, Bloom's other bete noire, cast as a mere warm-up exercise to the "grimmer" rule of feminist tyranny. "The July 14 of the sexual revolution," he writes, "was really only a day between the overthrow of the Ancient Regime and the onset of the Terror."

The bachelor Bloom writes very little of the problem with education, but a great deal of ink was used to paint the women's movement as a terrorist attack on America, and his paranoia that universities had succumbed to the terror of the radical feminist.

[Bloom] a Plato scholar teaches at the University of Chicago, where he has retreated to the conservative, and practically all-male, bunker of the Committee on Social Thought (which had only one woman on its faculty): "I'm protected in my eccentric ivory tower," he says. "It's worse in the departments." When venturing outside the committee's demilitarized zone, he treads warily. "It's hard to explain to people who aren't in the universities how extraordinary it is," he says, comparing his lot to a shell-shocked refugee bearing atrocity stories: "I'm like one of the first people out of Cambodia."

According to Bloom's report from the front, feminists have invaded every academic sanctuary—a view shared by the many male scholars denouncing "political correctness" in the early '90s. "One finds it in all the various departments. They have made tremendous changes in courses. But more than that, in the old established courses with traditionalist books, a huge number [of professors] are teaching from that point of view. You study American history now, and what is America but the history of the enslavement of women! There's no question but it's become the doctrine." (1)

Gairdner also speaks of "radical feminists" in Canada and how they too have influenced teaching, or what he refers to as "brain washing". He quotes the more extreme advocates for the movement, while ignoring the fact that there are legitimate grievances.

Instead, he suggests that men are the ones being victimized.

So woe betide us if men ever manifest the same lack of confidence in themselves as women have done for the past few decades and start a worldwide "masculinist" movement. That would have lots of fodder.

For example, men carry a disproportionate "death burden" in society. They die much younger than women do; there is a "life gap" favouring women all over the world. They are also vastly more often the victims of violent crime - than are women. They also suffer outright discrimination in wartime: over 120,000 Canadian men have been killed in battle, 150 in Afghanistan as of this writing; and a handful of women, of which three in Afghanistan. Men also suffer an unfair anti-emotional bias, and a stereotype-burden: we say "men can take it"—so listen, don't even think about crying, eh? Society also unfairly expects men (not women) to compete financially for their entire lives, and face scorn and failure if they can't hack it. Boys begin to feel this expectation in big way when they are about fifteen. They don't have the same safe harbour default option of homemaking and child-rearing as women do. (2)

Gairdner wrote those words in a follow up to The Trouble With Canada, The Trouble With Canada ... Still. Hard to imagine that he would think that way in 2010, but his arguments provide an excellent case for equality, to free both men and women from the "stereotype-burden".

As to men being the victims of violent crime more often than women, men also perpetrate violent crime more often than women. And few women have that "safe harbour default option of homemaking and child-rearing", even if they wanted it.

What this really boils down to for men like Bloom and Gairdner, is that they are losing their status, when just being male opened all the doors. They truly believe that men are superior and resent any notion that they're not.

Perhaps what troubled Bloom was not so much that the feminist-tainted American mind was closing—but that it was closing against him. In 1970, Bloom felt compelled to flee his Ivy League haven for Canada. -The guns at Cornell," as he characterized the student uprising, drove him out. While only a very few of the guns were in women's hands, they are the ones he most vividly recalls—and resents. "That's when I began encountering the feminists," he recalls of Cornell, which was one of the first college campuses to establish a women's studies program. "The feminists started speaking very strongly.... Some of them are students who have since become well known. They were mostly women doing comparative literature who got a lot of attention."

While these women were building their careers and collecting their kudos, he felt exiled for ten bitter years at the University of Toronto. "I was lost," he told a reporter later. Two years into his expatriate post, at the relatively young age of forty-one, he suffered a heart attack. Finally, after two years of negotiations, he received a faculty appointment at the University of Chicago. But even there he remained, in his word, a "nobody." (1)

Understanding the influence of the 'Chicago School', brought to Canada by the 'Calgary School', is important if we are to understand the Harper agenda.

This is not just about imperialism, neoconservatism, racism, sexism, and all the other 'isms'. It is a total "movement", influenced by men like Leo Strauss, Friedrich Von Hayek, Milton Friedman and Allan Bloom; and absorbed by Stephen Harper and the Reform Party (now calling themselves the Conservative party of Canada).

All of these men are deceased (with the exception of Gairdner), but their legacy lives on in the Republican Party, the Tea Party and the current Canadian government.

Defunding the Status for Women, promoting male sports and traditionally male occupations, is only part of the incremental steps in destroying everything so many women fought for.

Harper likes to suggest that he has many women in his cabinet and caucus, but they are women who sit down and shut up and do as they're told. They hardly represent us.

We'd better start paying attention.

Sources:

1. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, By Susan Faludi, Crown publishing, 1991, ISBN: 0-385-42507-4, Pg. 290-296

2. The Trouble With Canada ... Still: A Citizen Speaks Out, By William D. Gairdner, Key Porter Books, 2010, ISBN: 978-1-55470-247-3, Pg. 238-240

Calgary School, Chicago School and the Committee on Social Thought

Canada's neoconservative movement has been slow to reach awareness in Canada, though throughout the 1990's, neoconservatism was a term used by many journalists and political pundits, to separate the conservatism of people like Mike Harris in Ontario, Ralph Klein in Alberta, Grant Devine in Saskatchewan and the Reform Party on the national scene; from the more traditional conservatism.

However, since Stephen Harper's "new" Conservative Party came to power, the mainstream media prefer to use the misnomer "Tory". A term that Stephen Harper himself, claimed to detest. "It's not my favourite term, but we're probably stuck with it." (Stephen Harper, Hamilton Spectator, January 24, 2004)

We are more familiar with American neoconservatism (on which our own movement is based), as represented by George W. Bush and his war mongers, and the free marketeers, who push deregulation, low or no corporate taxes, and the end of the welfare state.

However, the political philosophy is not simply about imperial wars or free market theories. It is a complete doctrine designed to change the way that we view the role of government.

Not a government that Abraham Lincoln famously claimed as being "of the people, by the people and for the people", but a government that is only there to serve the interests of profit.

The National Citizens Coalition, of which Harper has been a member for more than three decades, and once served as president, espouses the Milton Friedman theory of eliminating government altogether, except for "policing and the military" (1).

Policing to ensure that the poor don't touch the rich people's stuff, and the military, so we can lay our hands on the stuff belonging to the poor of other nations.

And this theory was galvanized at the University of Chicago, almost 60 years ago.

The Chicago School

In 1963, Time magazine ran a piece about the University of Chicago: The Return of a Giant, where they spoke of the difference a decade had made to the school.

In 1953 the University of Chicago was so close to academic anarchy that its graduate schools refused to honor degrees from its college, and only 141 freshmen entered the place. The limestone Gothic campus was marooned in a sea of slums and muggers; the trustees morosely considered moving the university out of Chicago. To sum up his problems, Chancellor Lawrence A. Kimpton told a story: "A Harvard professor about to come here went to his young son's room the night before they left Cambridge. The boy was praying: 'And now, goodbye, God. We're going to Chicago.'" (2)

What saved the school was a change in direction.

They couldn't compete for the academic liberalism of places like Harvard, so instead chose to create an academic conservatism, "where "classical" Economist Friedrich von Hayek ... [and] conservative Milton Friedman" became "Chicago's answer to Harvard's liberal John K. Galbraith."

However the economics of Friedman and Hayek, were not palpable to most Americans, and since they couldn't be pushed through the barrel of a gun, as happened in places like Chile and Argentina, it became necessary to change the way that people think.

And as sci-fi as that sounds, they set out to accomplish this with scholars, including Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt, who were encouraged to think outside the norm.

The Committee on Social Thought

The graduate studies in unorthodox thinking, had its own outpost:

The oddest graduate school in the U.S. is a far-out arm of the University of Chicago called the Committee on Social Thought. Physically, it is a dingy office under the eaves of the social science building. Its faculty, which includes Novelist Saul Bellow and Political Scientist Hannah Arendt, numbers only eleven. But its goal is as big as the world ... The committee is a generalist's elysium, a haven for "eccentrics" commanded to "think in new areas." If they do, the school gives them the degree of Doctor of Social Thought. (3)

Not all graduates churned out conservative essays, but the ones who did, very much changed the way the U.S. government did business.

In fact, one graduate who studied under Leo Strauss, the late Irving Kristol, called himself the "Godfather of Neoconversation".

He and scholars like him, flooded the market with books and essays, promoting free markets, and the freedom of the individual, including the freedom to be poor and sick, so long as you didn't expect the government to do anything about it.

The Calgary School

The first to use the term The Calgary School, as the Canadian equivalent of The Chicago School, was David J. Rovinsky, who wrote a paper for the Washington based Center for Strategic and International Studies, entitled: THE ASCENDANCY OF WESTERN CANADA IN CANADIAN POLICY MAKING.

In the paper he confirms that neoconservatism is more than just an economic theory, but a political argument, and that the Calgary School is part of an "international neoconservative movement".

So while Stephen Harper and his government have adopted the economic principles of Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, they represent something more profound.

An increasingly successful attempt at social engineering.

They want to completely change the way we view ourselves culturally and historically.

The rise of the west as a potent force in Canadian political life has had several consequences. It has turned federal and provincial governments toward fiscal conservatism, deficit reduction, and state retrenchment; led a reexamination of policies related to immigration and multiculturalism; and exposed the scope of judicial activism in the wake of the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to new political debate. Most important, it has induced the rest of English-speaking Canada to take a new hard line on the question of recognizing Quebec’s distinctiveness in the Canadian constitution, to the point of encouraging the French-speaking province to leave the federation. Western Canada’s embrace of classical liberalism, together with its increasing demographic weight within the country, has the potential to make Canadian political debate in the early 21st century much different, and probably less distinctively Canadian, than it was for the bulk of the 20th. (4)

And The Calgary School is helping to accomplish that.

Like The Chicago School, they challenge civil rights and what they term "judicial activism". In Chicago, law professors "lambasted the U.S. Supreme Court for being "a policymaker without proper judicial restraint. (2)"

And Stephen Harper in 1997, told leading American Conservatives, "And we have a Supreme Court, like yours, which, since we put a charter of rights in our constitution in 1982, is becoming increasingly arbitrary and important ... "

I often quote a line that appeared in the Vancouver Sun several years ago, describing Harper's Reform Party:

"Reform is somewhat un-Canadian. It's about tidy numbers, self-righteous sanctimoniousness and western grievances. It cannot talk about the sea or about our reluctant fondness for Quebec, about our sorrow at the way our aboriginal people live, about the geographically diverse, bilingual, multicultural mess of a great country we are."

The Reformers, or more specifically, the neoconservatives, do not want us to "talk about the sea, our reluctant fondness for Quebec or our sorrow at the way our aboriginal people live".

So instead they create alternative Canadian stories, not the least of which is Calgary School's Tom Flanagan's book First Nations, Second Thoughts. In it he diminishes the importance of our First Nations, reducing them to just another band of immigrants.

But he is not the only Calgary scholar to try to change our history or the way we view ourselves. According to Rovinsky,

A look at classical liberalism among western intellectuals almost necessarily begins with David Bercuson and Barry Cooper. Bercuson, a University of Calgary historian, and Cooper, a political scientist at the same institution, each have a track record of publishing that features interest in neoconservatism and the Canadian west as a region. Bercuson has written a number of pieces on regionalism, and edited Canada and the Burden of Unity. Cooper has co-edited a book of comparative essays on neoconservatism in English-speaking countries and has written a stinging critique of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (Bercuson 1977, 1981; Cooper 1988, 1994). Yet they truly established their notoriety with their 1991 book Deconfederation: Canada Without Quebec. They state openly that the most important issue for constitutional reform is the preservation of Canada as a liberal democracy rooted in individual rights. The most significant threat to liberalism in Canada is Queberes call for special status and recognition of collective rights rooted in culture ...

And again to Harper:

"The establishment came down with a constitutional package which they put to a national referendum. The package included distinct society status for Quebec and some other changes, including some that would just horrify you, putting universal Medicare in our constitution, and feminist rights, and a whole bunch of other things." (5)

This shows that the Calgary School is alive and well in the Harper government. And before suggesting that Harper has abandoned his views on Quebec, we have to remember another Flanagan goal "how to convince Canadians that we are moving to the left, when we are not".

However, there is a more important book written by the Bercuson/Cooper team: Derailed: The Betrayal of the National Dream. In it they lay out the agenda, in a 'head in the clouds' idealism.

Bercuson and Cooper divide Canadian history into periods of good government and bad government, the latter broadly covering the Pearson, Trudeau, and Mulroney governments. Good government essentially refers to a government that worries about economic growth and that assumes that other good things, like national unity and social harmony flow from abundant material wealth. (4)

I guess they didn't hear the old adage that "money is the root of all evil".

Because the problem with this philosophy, is that "abundant material wealth" is concentrated at the top, and the "trickle down" theory, a myth.

It's important to view neoconservatism in the big picture of excessive greed and human suffering.

Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, does an excellent job of exposing this. It was written in 2007, before the Wall Street induced "economic crisis", engineered to put the final nail in the coffin of the welfare state.

The Opposition has got to change their strategy, by changing the channel. When was the last time that healthcare was debated? I mean really debated?

When asked, Flaherty will stick to his one liner "we are not going to alter the transfer to the provinces." Not a word on protecting the Canada Health Act, that guarantees the right to universal healthcare for all citizens.

We have to understand that the neocon way is not the Canadian way. It is the American Republican way. The Calgary School way.

"Westerners, but especially Albertans, founded the Reform/Alliance to get "in" to Canada. The rest of the country has responded by telling us in no uncertain terms that we do not share their 'Canadian values.' Fine. Let us build a society on Alberta values." Stephen Harper

Getting rid of Stephen Harper anytime soon, is unlikely, but remember this. The Calgary School is already grooming Pierre Poilievre as his replacement. Oye!



Sources:

1. The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen: Canada and Democracy in the Age of Globalization, By Murray Dobbin, James Lorimer & Company, 2003, ISBN: 1-55028-785-0, Pg. 200-203

2. Universities: Return of a Giant, Time magazine, May 31, 1963

3. Universities: Generalist's Elysium, Time Magazine, January 03, 1964

4. THE ASCENDANCY OF WESTERN CANADA IN CANADIAN POLICY MAKING, By David J. Rovinsky, Policy Papers on the Americas, February 16, 1998, Volume IX Study 2

5. Full text of Stephen Harper's 1997 speech, Canadian Press, December 14, 2005

On Being Shock Doctrined by the Media

While reading Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, it occurs to me that Canada, like many other nations, had become the science lab for Milton Friedman and the Chicago School.

Stephen Harper's strong connections with the Republican neoconservative movement, are not random or isolated. We fit a template, though it didn't take a coup for the final victory.

It was more of a hostile takeover. And it began with the media and the Fraser Institute.

The Fraser was opened by Michael Walker in 1973, in response to an NDP government being elected in British Columbia.

In the fall of 1973, Michael Walker ...got a call from an old college friend, Csaba Hajdu. Hajdu's boss, MacMillan Bloedel's T. Patrick Boyle, and other business executives in B.C. were greatly agitated by the NDP government of Dave Barrett and wanted advice on how to bring about its demise. In the spring, Walker met with Boyle, who twenty-three years later is still a Fraser Institute trustee. While a think-tank was not an ideal way to deal with the immediate problem of getting rid of the NDP government, Boyle and his mining-executive friends were apparently willing to take the long view. Walker's pitch was good enough to persuade fifteen of them to hand over a total of $200,000 to get the project started." It was the seed money for the Fraser Institute. (1)

And from the beginning, the Fraser was helped along by the American neocons:

The Fraser Institute also boasts impressive conservative credentials. The institute's authors include Milton Friedman [Ronald Reagan's economic adviser] and Herbert Grubel, while its editorial board includes Sir Alan Walters, former personal economic adviser to Margaret Thatcher. Finally, William F. Buckley Jr, brother-in-law of BC Socred bagman Austin Taylor, is a favourite guest speaker of the institute. In short, the Fraser Institute is a conservative think-tank heavily funded by the corporate sector. (2)

Conrad Black, the man who gobbled up the Canadian media and turned it into a vehicle for the right, was also an early supporter of the Fraser. He no doubt used his influence to bring many prominent media personalities on board.

Murray Dobbin discusses this in his 2003 book, The Myth of the Corporate Citizen:

... as the Fraser Institute's annual reports highlight, there is a cosy relationship between prominent Canadian journalists and the Fraser. The Financial Post co-sponsors the institute's Economy in Government prize, which has rewarded such ideas as creating publicly funded private schools. Diane Francis, editor of the Financial Post, is pictured in an annual report photo addressing a Fraser Institute fundraising luncheon. Financial Post editor-at-large Neville Nankivell and Globe and Mail columnist "Terry" Corcoran are shown "sharing a joke" and "taking part in a discussion" with staff at the institute's offices.

The Fraser Institute seems to have a particularly cosy relationship with CTV news. In 1994, chief anchor and senior news editor Lloyd Robertson lent his support to the institute by serving as guest speaker at one of its fundraising luncheons. Mike Duffy, host of CTV's public-affairs program Sunday Edition, also helped the institute fundraise by being a guest speaker in 1995.(3)

Mike Duffy is now a senator, a reward for his complicity in the 2008 election victory of Harper. He didn't bring in Conservative voters, but his machinations, resulted in many Liberal voters choosing to stay home.

CTV's Pamela Wallin is also a Harper appointed senator, and Canwest Global's Peter Kent, a Harper cabinet minister.

The use of the media to promote a neoconservative/neoliberal agenda is not new, though I was surprised to learn that it had been used in Chile, before the coup, by the Edwards Family publishing empire, and their newspaper El Mercurio.

The Chicago School had first become interested in Latin America, when it was being influenced by Raul Prebisch, and his developmentalist theories.

They opened a branch of their school in Chile, hoping to churn out disciples who could turn the region into a hotbed for their own theories, but it didn't work. The people were simply not ready to take a sharp right turn.

But when Savadore Allende, a known Marxist, was elected President, they went into panic mode, first attacking him in the press, who for ...

.... three years [carried] on an energetic campaign against the elected government, sustained by a subsidy of $1.5 million from the government of the United States. The principal shareholders of El Mercurio were the Edwards family, the descendants of early 19th century immigrants from Britain who had founded a banking empire, the Banco de A. Edwards, and further increased their wealth as the salesmen of a popular brand of American carbonated drinks. (4)

And when that didn't work, they launched their coup, and who became the first economy minister under the planted dictator Augustus Pinochet? Fernando Leniz, president of the El Mercurio newspaper.

What happened next is an almost carbon copy of what has been happening across the free world when the neocons gain control.

Leniz and his associates pushed through an immediate programme to favour richer Chileans by cutting taxes and public spending, a strategy which undid much of the progress which the Allende government had achieved in making Chile into a fairer society with opportunity for all. Leniz abolished taxes on wealth and capital gains tax, giving the wealthy a chance further to enrich themselves and widening the already enormous gulf between rich and poor in Chile. At the same time the privatisation of much of the economy provided golden opportunities for those who were able to take part in that process, notably, as we shall see, the Pinochet family itself.

Allende's price controls, which had kept basic items within the reach of poorer people, were abolished by the dictatorship at a stroke. Trade union activity was hampered where it was not totally outlawed, and stripped increasingly vulnerable workers of protection.

Land reforms pursued by Allende were reversed and land returned to its former owners, causing rural workers to suffer. The free daily ration of milk which Allende had set up for children was abolished, and health services and the state school system deteriorated. Unemployment, which in the Allende years had been around 4 per cent of the workforce, touched 14.5 per cent by 1975. In the same year the gross national product dropped by 12.9 per cent and the average Chilean grew 20 per cent poorer ... (4)

And just as Margaret Thatcher's reforms were devastating for Britain, and Ronald Reagan created the most homeless people in American history, Chile witnessed a new phenomenon: The birth of the soup kitchen.

In the mid-1970s Pinochet's policies produced a striking image for the times, the soup kitchen. These informal food banks filled a great need for poor Chileans. It was common in the poor neighbourhoods that surrounded many cities to see long queues of people lining up for dollops of food among their leaking wooden shacks and unmade roads.

In 1975 Milton Friedman visited Chile in the company of another right-wing economist, Arnold Harberger. Both proclaimed themselves satisfied with the state of the Chilean economy. Meanwhile, the bankers who had so cannily smelt good times coming in September 1973 made hay. In her study for the Economist Intelligence Unit in 1987, Stephany Griffith-Jones, the eminent Chilean economist, pointed to how the bankers were making enormous profits on their loans. In the second half of 1975 they paid depositors 19 per cent a year in real terms while they charged borrowers on average 115 per cent for loans, a margin of 96 per cent. (4)

The Edwards Family newspapers helped to reap enormous profits for the Edwards Family banks.

It's no wonder Friedman was so elated.

He should have tried the "soup".

Sources:

1. The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen: Canada and Democracy in the Age of Globalization, By Murray Dobbin, James Lorimer & Company, 2003, ISBN: 1-55028-785-0, Pg. 188

2. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada, By Trevor Harrison, University of Toronto Press, 1995. ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6, Pg. 48-49

3. Dobbin, 2003, Pg. 209

4. Pinochet: The Politics of Torture, By Hugo "'Shaughnessy, New York University Press, 2000, ISBN: 0-8147-6201-8, Pg. 137-139

Michael Coren's History Lesson Needs a History Lesson

Right-wing personality, Michael Coren, has a column this week, where he discusses the arrest of Ratko Mladic, for war crimes.

The charges are his involvement in the slaughter of 8,000 Muslims in Serbia.

Coren does not defend his actions, at least not in so many words, but suggests a double standard, given that in many countries Muslims are killing each other. He even taps into Stalin and his death forces, as another example of a nation killing their own.

However, I'm currently reading and sharing bits of Namoi Kleins's The Shock Doctrine, where Chicago School economist, Milton Friedman, was behind shock therapy in places like, though far from limited to, Chile and Venezuela. In these places U.S. sponsored demagogues turned on their own people, creating torture chambers and death camps.

Christians turning on other Christians.

And yet Friedman is a Neoconservative god, and the inspiration for much of Stephen Harper's ideology.

The Harper government is creating museums and monuments, to honour the victims of Communism and anti-Semitism. A noble gesture.

However, I think they should also have a museum for the victims of "democracy", neoconservative style.

Or what has been dubbed "Authoritarian Democracy".

Nobody's hands are cleans.

Stephen Harper May Be in Trouble as Rally Hits Calgary

Harper may be in more trouble than he thinks, because there will now be Canadians Against Proroguing rally outside his office in Calgary. Chris White, founder of the Facebook group left this message for the organizers of the Calgary rally.

Hey Guys,
I was in your city yesterday and just wanted to say thank you so much for organizing! Out of all the cities in this country, I think having Calgarians stand up for democracy outside Mr. Harper's office will be one of themost powerful images to come out of this whole thing. Best of luck, you're allwelcome here in Edmonton anytime!

Calgarians Against Proroguing Parliament

Calgary is organizing an anti-prorogue rally. Join us at Prime Minister Harper's office at Glenmore Landing on Saturday, January 23 - 1pm-2:30 pm Bring your Flag!

Join our Facebook event for additional and up-to-date info.

This non-partisan group is intended to encourage discussion about how prorogation affects us and to create an opportunity for Calgarians to take action through dialogue, affirmative action, and peaceful assembly.

Website:http://twitter.com/cappyycLocation:Calgary, AB

There is even a member from the Netherlands:

Diogenes van Sinope - Hey everybody, I have joined this group to wish you well. I live in the Netherlands now but Calgary is my hometown. I am horrifiedby what is happening to democracy in Canada.

The Calgary School, the Firewall Letter and Harper's Vision for Canada

After the 2006 election, journalist and long time follower of Stephen Harper and the Reform Party, Murray Dobbin; wrote:

Harper now talks about a "Canada First" policy. But for thirty years, he and the pro-American think tank at the "Calgary School" (the political science department at the University of Calgary) have joined together to promote "Alberta First." That means a weakened federal government. In a letter to the National Post in 2000, Harper wrote:

"If Ottawa giveth, then Ottawa can taketh away. This is one more reason why Westerners, but Albertans in particular, need to think hard about their future in this country. After sober reflection, Albertans should decide that it is time to seek a new relationship with Canada. It is time to look at Quebec and to learn. What Albertans should take from this example is to become ’maitres chez nous’."

After the 2000 election when Stockwell day was pummelled, Harper wrote an op-ed piece in which he declared that he was for Alberta first and the rest of Canada a distant second. A distant second?

In January of 2001, he helped to draft a letter to Alberta Premier Ralph Klein, suggesting ways to make Canada a distant second. So why wasn't this letter published during the 2005/2006 election campaign? It might have saved us from this ruthless monster.

Dear Premier Klein:

During and since the recent federal election, we have been among a large number of Albertans discussing the future of our province. We are not dismayed by the outcome of the election so much as by the strategy employed by the current federal government to secure its re-election.

In our view, the Chretien government undertook a series of attacks not merely designed to defeat its partisan opponents, but to marginalize Alberta and Albertans within Canada’s political system. One well-documented incident was the attack against Alberta’s health care system. To your credit, you vehemently protested the unprecedented attack ads that the federal government launched against Alberta’s policies – policies the Prime Minister had previously found no fault with.

(My note: They must have forgotten the 1997 campaign when the Reformers ran a controversial television ad where the faces of PM Jean Chrétien, Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe, PC leader Jean Charest, and Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard, were crossed out; followed by a message saying that Quebec politicians had dominated the federal government for too long and that the Reform Party would end this favoritism towards that province.)

However, while your protest was necessary and appreciated by Albertans, we believe that it is not enough to respond only with protests. If the government in Ottawa concludes that Alberta is a soft target, we will be subjected to much worse than dishonest television ads. The Prime Minister has already signaled as much by announcing his so called “tough love” campaign for the West. We believe the time has come for Albertans to take greater charge of our own future. This means resuming control of the powers that we possess under the constitution of Canada but that we have allowed the federal government to exercise.

Intelligent use of these powers will help Alberta build a prosperous future in spite of a misguided and increasingly hostile government in Ottawa.

Under the heading of the “Alberta Agenda,” we propose that our province move forward on the following fronts:

• Withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan to create an Alberta Pension Plan offering the same benefits at lower cost while giving Alberta control over the investment fund. Pensions are a provincial responsibility under section 94A of the Constitution Act. 1867; and the legislation setting up the Canada Pension Plan permits a province to run its own plan, as Quebec has done from the beginning. If Quebec can do it, why not Alberta?

• Collect our own revenue from personal income tax, as we already do for corporate income tax. Now that your government has made the historic innovation of the single-rate personal income tax, there is no reason to have Ottawa collect our revenue. Any incremental cost of collecting our own personal income tax would be far outweighed by the policy flexibility that Alberta would gain, as Quebec’s experience has shown.

• Start preparing now to let the contract with the RCMP run out in 2012 and create an Alberta Provincial Police Force. Alberta is a major province. Like the other major provinces of Ontario and Quebec, we should have our own provincial police force. We have no doubt that Alberta can run a more efficient and effective police force than Ottawa can – one that will not be misused as a laboratory for experiments in social engineering.

• Resume provincial responsibility for health-care policy. If Ottawa objects to provincial policy, fight in the courts. If we lose, we can afford the financial penalties that Ottawa may try to impose under the Canada Health Act. Albertans deserve better than the long waiting periods and technological backwardness that are rapidly coming to characterize Canadian medicine. Alberta should also argue that each province should raise its own revenue for health care – i.e., replace Canada Health and Social Transfer cash with tax points as Quebec has argued for many years. Poorer provinces would continue to rely on Equalization to ensure they have adequate revenues.

• Use section 88 of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Quebec Secession Reference to force Senate reform back onto the national agenda. Our reading of that decision is that the federal government and other provinces must seriously consider a proposal for constitutional reform endorsed by “a clear majority on a clear question” in a provincial referendum. You acted decisively once before to hold a senatorial election. Now is the time to drive the issue further.

All of these steps can be taken using the constitutional powers that Alberta now possesses. In addition, we believe it is imperative for you to take all possible political and legal measures to reduce the financial drain on Alberta caused by Canada’s tax-and-transfer system. The most recent Alberta Treasury estimates are that Albertans transfer $2,600 per capita annually to other Canadians, for a total outflow from our province approaching $8 billion a year. The same federal politicians who accuse us of not sharing their “Canadian values” have no compunction about appropriating our Canadian dollars to buy votes elsewhere in the country.

Mr. Premier, we acknowledge the constructive reforms that your government made in the 1990s – balancing the budget, paying down the provincial debt, privatizing government services, getting Albertans off welfare and into jobs, introducing a single-rate tax, pulling government out of the business of subsidizing business, and many other beneficial changes. But no government can rest on its laurels. An economic slowdown, and perhaps even recession, threatens North America, the government in Ottawa will be tempted to take advantage of Alberta’s prosperity, to redistribute income from Alberta to residents of other provinces in order to keep itself in power. It is imperative to take the initiative, to build firewalls around Alberta, to limit the extent to which an aggressive and hostile federal government can encroach upon legitimate provincial jurisdiction.

Once Alberta’s position is secured, only our imagination will limit the prospects for extending the reform agenda that your government undertook eight years ago. To cite only a few examples, lower taxes will unleash the energies of the private sector, easing conditions for Charter Schools will help individual freedom and improve public education, and greater use of the referendum and initiative will bring Albertans into closer touch with their own government.

The precondition for the success of this Alberta Agenda is the exercise of all our legitimate provincial jurisdictions under the constitution of Canada. Starting to act now will secure the future for all Albertans.

Sincerely yours,

Stephen HARPER, President, National Citizens’ Coalition;

Tom FLANAGAN, professor of political science and former Director of Research, Reform Party of Canada;

Ted MORTON, professor of political science and Alberta Senator-elect;

Rainer KNOPFF, professor of political science;

Andrew CROOKS, chairman, Canadian Taxpayers Federation;

Ken BOESSENKOOL, former policy adviser to Stockwell Day, Treasurer of Alberta.

Harper's Mentor Claims He's a Slow Learner But Maybe it's Tom Flanagan Who Needs a Lesson

It might be said that American born Tom Flanagan was behind Stephen Harper's rise to the top, but I think he was just one of many. As a member of the infamous Calgary School, he certainly saw in Stephen Harper, a man who could bring about the changes deemed necessary to steer this country to the right.

But Flanagan's vision of conservatism, was more like Preston Manning's and he underestimated the depths of Harper's neo-conservative leanings. He may have also underestimated his blind ambition and pathological narcissism. Stephen Harper makes enemies easier than he makes friends, and as a political sociopath, prefers the former to the latter; to feed his need for combat.

Both Manning and Flanagan learned this the hard way. They are probably smarter than our prime minister, and as such assumed that Stephen Harper wanted their advice. But Harper only wanted their advice when it related to his personal success, but never on how to do his job once that success was achieved.

In the video above, Tom Flanagan expresses his disappointment in his former protegee, believing that he has abandoned his conservative principles for power.

But what he failed to understand, was that Harper had not abandoned his neo-conservative principles, which have very little to do with fiscal responsibility.

Tom Flanagan is quick to correct anyone who believes that he is a follower of Leo Strauss, but unfortunately did not see this in Harper.

Economists Eugene Lang and Philip DeMont, certainly did. In a piece entitled Big-spender Harper true to his neoconservative roots, written for the Toronto Star, they state: A new conventional wisdom has emerged. The Harper government has been labelled moderate, centrist – even "liberal."

This characterization is due entirely to the large fiscal deficits that have emerged on the Harper watch – $56 billion next year alone – deficits the government admits with a shrug will extend for several years.

No self-respecting conservative government could tolerate such profligacy, or so goes the critique. The Harperites have lost their way, abandoned their guiding philosophy, sold out to those soft-headed, big government political parties for which deficits are regarded as a normal part of governing.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Harper government has, in fact, remained very true to its ideology. But that ideology is not "conservative." Rather, it is neoconservative," and this makes a big difference on the question of deficits and fiscal policy.

So Tom Flanagan and others may have become critical of Stephen Harper for selling out, but Harper sold out to no one. Now that he has a dictatorship, just stick around and watch how a neo-conservative agenda works.

But fasten your seat belts because you're in for one hell of a ride.

PM's former mentor says repute 'tattered'
By Don Martin,
Calgary Herald
June 13, 2009

It's too harsh to qualify as constructive criticism, even if the author was still Prime Minister Stephen Harper's mentor and academic adviser.

The words are too deadly to be considered friendly fire, even if the writer was still running the Conservative's election war room.

And, if Tom Flanagan was still serving as Harper's chief of staff, his new assessment of the PM's postelection debacle would probably hand him the pink slip from a boss who takes bad news badly.

The University of Calgary political scientist served in all of these roles to this prime minister, yet he's come to the startling conclusion his star student and political protege is battered, tattered and almost beyond repair as a going-forward force in federal politics.

If this glum assessment was written by any columnist in the land, it would be vilified by party faithful as the predictable rantings of a Liberal-loving mainstream media.

But it's penned by an insightful Calgarian once described by former Reform party insider Rick Anderson as an "intellectual, philosophical soulmate" to a Stephen Harper he had nursed back onto the federal stage and nurtured along as the great right-wing hope to Canadian conservatives.

As such, his words deliver a painful punch. Flanagan's appraisal is part of an updated conclusion to his two-year-old Harper's Team insider's account of the Conservative leader's rise to power, a friendly account reportedly vetted by the PMO prior to its original publication.

The way Flanagan sees it now, Harper is adrift in a vacuum of policy and principle, conniving to retain power while hemorrhaging respect as a flawed political strategist. Harper's greatest gaffe was inserting the elimination of public financing for political parties into last fall's economic update-- "his single worst mistake, not just as prime minister but in his career as a party leader," Flanagan writes.

He had perfected the art of keeping political opponents squabbling among themselves, but that move united all three parties under a common survival strategy that gave the Conservatives a near-death experience at the hands of the short-lived coalition.

It dealt a mortal blow to Harper's vaulted reputation as a brilliant tactician.

"Before the fall fiasco he wasn't exactly loved by the public, but he was widely respected by political observers as a competent manager and a shrewd strategist. But after his misadventure with the political subsidy issue, many are saying that his strategic sense has been overrated. This is a dangerous development for if you are not to be loved, you must at least be respected."

What's worse, Flanagan lists the reasons the once-principled leader has "tattered" his credibility by embracing corporate subsidies, violating his own fixed election date law, diving into deficit and breaking election promises on income trust taxation and equalization calculations.

"Taken together, along with other less publicized reversals, they have created a widespread impression that Harper stands for nothing in particular except winning and keeping power. This is a major loss for a political leader who was once seen as a man of conviction."

Well, ouch. But all is not lost, Flanagan sighs. If Harper gets back to his base with moderate Conservative policies, ending the partisan trickery and reaching out to opponents, he could still rewrite the premature obituaries.

Of course, the fundamental flaw in Flanagan's salvage strategy is that his old protege surrounds himself with yes-prime-minister types who tell the boss only what he wants to hear. He's certain to turn a deaf ear to Flanagan, believing that the solution to having friends like these is to find new friends.

But Harper's survival demands a colossal shakeup of his government's senior staff, bringing fearless professionalism and fresh perspectives to a productive minority reign riding out tough economic times. If they can deliver that, getting the government re-elected will take care of itself.

Pierre Poilievre Looked to Republicans for Accountability but Found None

The relationship between the Conservative Party of Canada and the American Republicans dates back to the Reform Party days, and probably even before, but it was strengthened with the Moral Majority/Religious Right.

However, the ties with Jim Sensenbrenner and his son Frank are rather disturbing. Apparently Frank was drawn to the Reformers when he was going to school in Canada and is a close personal friend of Stockwell Day.

However, I'll be getting into that a bit more, but I wanted to go back to Pierre Poilievre's interest in Sensenbrenner.

When he and John Baird were drafting their, what we now know was fraudulent Accountability Act, he went to see the Republican with the possibility of adopting the U.S. False Claims Act.

The Conservatives are considering an American-style law that would pay a bounty to a whistleblower who sues a company that defrauds the federal government or wastes taxpayers' money.

Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre, who is overseeing the Harper government's whistleblower reforms, is meeting with U.S. legislators in Washington over the next several days to see if the U.S. False Claims Act can be adapted to Canada as part of the much-touted Federal Accountability Act. (1)

We have to remember that the "much-touted Accountability Act, was actually a Liberal initiative and those who had worked on the task force had already looked into the U.S. False Claims Act.

Ken Kernaghan, the political scientist at Brock University who headed the task force into whistleblowing, said the members unanimously rejected the idea of paying public servants who expose fraud because it appealed to a "base instinct" that could possibly lead to ill-founded allegations.

Most of the task force's recommendations were ultimately included in the Liberals' whistleblower act, C-11, which passed through the Senate days before the Martin government fell, but wasn't formally proclaimed. (1)

Now Poilievre and Baird never really did anything about an Accountability Act except to make sure that it got a lot of press. They also set up offices with no other function than the ability to be able to say they have those offices in place. But I wanted to take another look at this so-called False Claims Act to see why the Reformers would be interested. And knowing that Jim Sensenbrenner was involved, I knew that somewhere along the line someone would probably be able to profit from it.

And I was right. According to the New York Post the only ones who really benefit are the lawyers and those they use to put forward their claims.

The law allows whistleblowers who report fraud against the government to collect up to 30 percent of any money recovered from information they provide ... Since Congress amended the law in 1986, hiking the potential payout to whistleblowers, suits have grown tenfold, with nearly 70 percent of them involving health-care companies. Since 1986, whistleblowers have collected a staggering $1 billion.

... Then there's the "protection racket" problem. Whistleblowers, plaintiffs' attorneys and even government prosecutors increasingly seem to be targeting legitimate businesses - using the threat of the FCA's steep penalties (which include permanent exclusion from government programs as well as big fines and damages) to coerce companies into settling cases rather than risking a trial verdict that could bankrupt them.

Plaintiffs' attorneys have helped fuel the fervor for FCA lawsuits. Shortly after Congress amended the FCA in 1986, public-interest lawyer John Phillips, who had lobbied heavily for the new legislation, set up a front group, "Taxpayers Against Fraud," to tout the law - and also set up his own private practice to cash in on the act. His firm has won some $100 million in contingency fees pursuing FCA cases, according to Forbes magazine, and its successes have attracted some 200 more contingency lawyers into the field.

Meanwhile, Taxpayers Against Fraud works the media. Cited dozens of times a year in press stories as an advocate for the FCA. (2)

And of course one of the people Phillips lobbied was Jim Sensenbrenner. If you go on their website they sing his praises and Phillips is on record as making contributions to Sensenbrenner's reelection campaigns.

So it would appear that this was not about wanting to clean up government, but wanting their supporters to clean up under the guise of accountability.

Aapparently the Calgary School are grooming him to eventually lead the movement some day, and since that means that there would be a possibility that he could be prime minister, we can't let him slip under the radar. His girlfriend is a key member of the party hierarchy, so has a lot of clout to make sure his career is nurtured from within.

Sources:

1. Tories consider U.S.-style bounty for waste-busting whistleblowers, Kathryn May,
The Ottawa Citizen, March 13, 2006

2. A Foolish Way to Fight Fraud, By: Steven Malanga, New York Post, March 29, 2006

Pierre Poilievre: Callousness and Lack of Empathy

Another characteristic of a sociopath is callousness and lack of empathy. What Pierre is discussing is the compensation paid to aboriginal victims of systematic abuse in the forced residential schools.

The tone of his voice definitely reveals a callousness, and the fact that he's looking for "value" for this compensation shows that he clearly does not understand the trauma suffered by former students. In fact his use of the word "partook", like they were willing participants in their own abuse, certainly indicates that he lacks any human compassion.

What is also telling is when he states that "some of us are starting to ask". The Reform-Alliance-Conservative Party have never agreed with the status afforded our First Nations, not understanding that they have treaty rights. They were never "conquered" as some would suggest, but have a legal right to their land and it's resources.

First Nations Second Thoughts

Several years ago, Marcie McDonald wrote an article for the Walrus magazine, entitled The Man Behind Stephen Harper, in which she discusses Tom Flanagan and the agenda of the Calgary School. McDonald opens with the following:

Consternation rumbled across the country like an approaching thunderhead. For aboriginal leaders, one of their worst nightmares appeared about to come true. Two weeks before last June’s federal election, pollsters were suddenly predicting that Conservative leader Stephen Harper might pull off an upset and form the next government.

What worried many in First Nations’ circles was not Harper himself, but the man poised to become the real power behind his prime ministerial throne: his national campaign director Tom Flanagan, a U.S.-born professor of political science at the University of Calgary. Most voters had never heard of Flanagan, who has managed to elude the media while helping choreograph Harper’s shrewd, three-year consolidation of power.

But among aboriginal activists, his name set off alarms. For the past three decades, Flanagan has churned out scholarly studies debunking the heroism of Métis icon Louis Riel, arguing against native land claims, and calling for an end to aboriginal rights. Those stands had already made him a controversial figure, but four years ago, his book, First Nations? Second Thoughts, sent tempers off the charts.

In it, Flanagan dismissed the continent’s First Nations as merely its “first immigrants” who trekked across the Bering Strait from Siberia, preceding the French, British et al. by a few thousand years – a rewrite which neatly eliminates any indigenous entitlement. Then, invoking the spectre of a country decimated by land claims, he argued the only sensible native policy was outright assimilation.

Aboriginal leaders were apoplectic at the thought Flanagan might have a say in their fate. Led by Phil Fontaine, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, they released an urgent open letter demanding to know if Harper shared Flanagan’s views. Two months later, Harper still had not replied.

For Clément Chartier, president of the Métis National Council, his silence speaks cautionary volumes. Martin’s minority government could fall any minute, giving Harper a second chance at the governmental brass ring. “If Flanagan continues to be part of the Conservative machinery and has the ear of a prime minister,” he worries, “it’s our existence as a people that’s at stake.”

Recently a Conservative MP, Peter Goldring, posted a newsletter to his website suggesting that Louis Riel was a villain.

Goldring posted the letter in response to a request from the federal New Democrats who wanted Louis Riel to be recognized as a father of confederation and wanted a conviction that saw him hanged for treason overturned. In his letter Goldring wrote, "Riel didn't father confederation; He fought those who did." Riel, a politician who fought for Metis rights in the late 1800s and also helped found the province of Manitoba, led two violent rebellions against the Canadian government and was hanged for treason.

The letter went on to say, "To un-hang Louis Riel and to mount a statue to him on Parliament Hill would elevate anarchy and civil disobedience to that of democratic statesmanship." The letter has now been removed from Goldring's website, but the words have Alberta's Metis outraged.

Was he one of the "some of us"?

In January 2002, when Jim Flaherty was the Ontario finance minister under Mike Harris, he suggested that the First Nations weren't "real people". (1)

Was he one of the "some of us"?

Backlash

Most knowledgeable listeners concluded that Poilievre continued to advocate the old Reform Party view and was not actually proposing to adopt any of the mutually acceptable solutions natives had agreed to or that previous governments had advocated. Mr. Harper, on taking office, had discarded Paul Martin's Kelowna Accord which was to begin to address some of the problems noted above.

Many listeners heard, in this context of prior positions by his party, Mr. Poilievre's comments as excusing prior governments' behaviour. His exact words: "Now, along with this apology, comes another $4 billion in compensation for those who partook in the residential schools over those years. Now, you know, some of us are starting to ask, 'are we really getting value for all of this money..."." As the word "partook" implies voluntary choices rather than state-sponsored child abuse, and those who pay compensation in civil courts are not usually consulted as to whether they (the abusers) are "getting value", the words appeared to convey some racist assumptions.

"Mr. Poilievre, who did not spend his childhood "partaking" in state-sponsored child abuse, is not sure the government is getting "value" for the compensation it is paying the natives it abused."

Anita Neville, the Liberal aboriginal affairs critic, called Poilievre's comments "disgraceful" and "ignorant." "I invite him to take a tour of many of the First Nations communities in this country and see how people are living," she told the Canadian Press. "The irony of something like this on the day of the apology... . And I fear it reflects an attitude or a view that is prevalent among many members of hat caucus." Opposition MPs called for Poilievre's resignation. According to news reports, many Conservative MPs were also angry at Poilievre.

The day after his appearance on CFRA, Poilievre rose in the House of Commons to apologize for his statement saying, "Yesterday on a day when the House and all Canadians were celebrating a new beginning, I made remarks that were hurtful and wrong. I accept responsibility for them and I apologize."

Liberal Tina Keeper, an aboriginal MP from Churchill, branded Mr. Poilievre "a national embarrassment," and said she had received more calls from constituents about Mr. Poilievre's remarks than she had about the prime minister's request for forgiveness for the assimilation policies of the residential-school program. (2)

This coming just as Stephen Harper was making a public apology put the entire thing in context. And for that context allow me to quote Tom Flanagan again when he was trying to repackage Harper to appear "prime ministerial": "How do we fool people into thinking that we're moving to the left when we're not?" (3)

Enough said.

Sources:

1. Canadian Race Relations Foundation, "Flaherty: Enough is enough says the Executive Director of the CRRF", News release, January 22, 2002

2. Wikipedia

3. The Pilgramage of Stephen Harper, By: Lloyd Mackey, ECW Press, 2005, ISBN: 10-1-55022-713-0